How the 1970s began for me and how I was nearly written off at the age of five
How the 1970s began for me and how I was nearly written off at the age of five Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 22 June 2022 It did not start too well for me: the seventies. I was only a few months into primary school. Making friends. Finding my feet as a shy, sensitive only child used to being the centre of attention of my parents. I had many advantages. The school I attended had been built and opened to mark the completion of the new expansive council estate that I lived in on the outskirts of Dundee. It was filled
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‘No Sex Please we are Scottish’: The rise of the Scottish miserablists
‘No Sex Please we are Scottish’: The rise of the Scottish miserabilists Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, 8 December 2021 These are times of huge challenge – globally, in the UK and Scotland – and an age where we need to get serious, mobilise and prioritise given the scale of problems humanity and the planet faces. Too often the big problems of our age struggle to get time and attention. These include the climate emergency and the urgent need to rethink economic growth. There is the march of AI and how work and employment will change in the near-future. There is
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Scotland’s Culture of Colluding with Violence
Scotland’s Culture of Colluding with Violence Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, March 20th 2019 Scotland was once infamous for its reputation and reality as a violent place. This was associated with all sorts of potent, demeaning caricatures of the angry, aggressive Scot, but underlying these images Scotland did have a problem. We had a culture of all too pervasive violence, a high murder rate with Glasgow earning the moniker ‘murder capital of Europe’, a problem with knife crime, and a wider attitude that it was too often permissible to solve differences by violence, including widespread violence against children. Much has changed
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Breaking the Taboos and Silences of Belting Scotland’s Children
Breaking the Taboos and Silences of Belting Scotland’s Children Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, April 11th 2018 Scottish education has always had an important, even disproportionate place in society - emphasising its distinctiveness, traditions, and of course, multiple individual stories and experiences. Yet our education system has had for all the good and positive stories, too many which are bad and dark. This legacy continues to this day. For all the pride in the best of our schools and education, there has been a historical culture of fear, punishment and violence, and teachers and authority using power inappropriately to control children.
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